so my question is pretty much what the title says. I'm asking only because i found 2 dead isopods and I'm not too sure if its the substrate, plants are doing fine for the most part, and when i touched it its moist but didn't really try the handful of substrate squeeze test as I'd have to disturb some of the plants. Don't have frogs in yet though.

It's ABG and I mixed a little bit of Zilla jungle mix in there. I think it does have tree fern. I remember pulling some chunks out to make it a little smaller. I don't remember seeing the isopods bounce around when I got them during the reptile show in NY.

Here's the tank:

Here's the dead iso I found, the other one is by the water area and is pretty hard to take a picture of

Your water level is well below the substrate barrier and the substrate doesnt look overly saturated at all.

Exactly - it looks like the water is only covering about the bottom 40% of the LECA depth. That's great, that's a great water level. LECA doesn't really wick at all, so your substrate isn't going to be getting soggy - not from the bottom up, anyway. At this depth, that would be impossible. Having some water in there is much better than having none in there - the key is, not too much. Wicking sucks.

If you can dial in your misting and watering so that you keep your LECA-layer water depth roughly about where it's at now (a little wiggling is fine, just watch for - and if you see it, remedy - a steady uo or a steady down), you're in good shape.

Quote:

Why do you suspect soggy substrate

Here, I'm intentionally truncating SM's question down to the substrate only (I'm not talking about the isopods or your search for reasons some of them died). Why do you think that substrate is soggy? It clearly is not...